


Everything Stuck to Him

by Lauralot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Body Modification, Casual Sex, Dark, Depression, Dildos, Drug Abuse, Eating Disorders, Exhibitionism, Gen, Guilt, HYDRA Trash Party, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Masturbation, No Lube, One Night Stands, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Self-Mutilation, Shame, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 16:00:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5671822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's body no longer belonged to HYDRA.  He could do anything he wanted with it, and Steve couldn't stop him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Stuck to Him

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by two prompts from the Hydra Trash Meme: [the first](http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1634.html?thread=3183458#cmt3183458) requesting Bucky aggressively owning his bodily autonomy, to the point of self-destructive behaviors, and [the second](http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1634.html?thread=3214946#cmt3214946) requesting Steve self-harming during Bucky's recovery due to guilt.
> 
> The full text of each prompt is provided in the closing author's note.

It started when Bucky threw up.

It was two weeks after Steve brought him to DC. In the first week, Bucky didn’t speak. He wouldn’t leave his room. Things were better now. Steve explained that he was welcome to all of the apartment, and things were better. He said as much that morning when he ran with Sam. Bucky was eating and speaking. He was home, and Steve wasn’t tearing out his hair or charging into HYDRA bases anymore. He hadn’t had nightmares about Bucky starving in a cold, dirty cell for two days.

He never mentioned the nightmares to Sam. They couldn’t be worse than what Bucky had suffered.

Bucky finished his breakfast and sat back. He looked at the frying pan on the stove, then looked away.

“You want more?” Steve asked.

Bucky lowered his head, hair hanging in his face.

“Buck?”

“You fed me.”

“Hey.” Steve reached out. Bucky didn’t move, and he pulled his hand back. “The food I make—it’s okay if you want more. It’s your food too, Bucky. You can have as much of it as you want.”

Bucky raised his head. He was biting his lip.

“Do you want more hash browns?” Steve asked.

Bucky nodded.

Two hours later, Steve heard retching and the air filled with the sour smell of vomit.

It was all over the bathroom, coating the tile, the toilet seat, and the shower curtain. It was all over Bucky, who tensed at Steve’s approach and tried to hide in the space between the toilet and the sink.

“Bucky,” Steve said. “You can’t help being sick. You’re not in trouble. How much did you eat?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“You said it was mine too.”

“It is,” Steve said. “But I didn’t think—”

Bucky’s eyes were wet.

“It’s not your fault.” Steve knelt beside him, ignoring the wet warmth seeping through the knees of his jeans. “I should have been more specific. Take a shower, all right? Then you can lie down until you’re feeling better. I’ll clean this up.”

When Bucky said he ate everything, he meant it. Steve could see it as he cleaned: chunks of pink, raw meat, barely chewed. Apple cores and orange rinds. Baking soda. He ate the baking soda. And that’s what got Steve gagging. Not the clumps of acid-soaked soda fizzing on the floor. Not the cloying smell burning in Steve’s lungs. Just imagining Bucky so shocked by the idea of second helpings that he thought he had to take everything at once or lose the chance forever.

Steve’s breakfast ended up in toilet bowl alongside Bucky’s. It seemed fitting.

That afternoon, Steve went to the store to restock the fridge.

That night, Bucky began retching again. His eyes were wide when Steve came into the bathroom, but he leaned forward, waiting.

Steve couldn’t fathom what he was waiting for.

*

Bucky only left the house at night.

DC was a city built around commuters, so the nights were quiet. They took long walks around the neighborhood, and at first Bucky tensed at every shadow, hands reaching for weapons that weren’t there. Steve smiled and promised that he was safe.

The mornings after the walks, Steve would remember the fear in Bucky’s eyes and slam his fists into the punching bags until his fingers broke. They’d repair themselves throughout the day, still aching by the time the next walk came around.

The days went by and Bucky stopped squeezing Steve’s hand at every sound.

“I want to go out,” Bucky said.

“Okay.” Steve set his book on the coffee table. “I’ll get my shoes.”

“I want to go out alone,” Bucky said.

Independence. Autonomy. As Bucky stepped outside, Steve reminded himself that this was progress. Progress tasted a lot like biting his lip bloody.

Bucky returned after an hour. The next night, two hours. On the third night it was three, and Bucky smelled like cigarettes and alcohol.

On the fourth night, he didn’t come back.

Steve sat up, waiting. It was nine in the morning when Bucky came home. His hair was tousled, clothes wrinkled. He winced at every sound and sipped water with red, swollen lips. He smelled like more than smoke and beer now.

He stiffened when he came in to find Steve staring at him. He stood there, waiting.

“You want breakfast?” Steve had asked.

Bucky shook his head and slumped onto the couch.

After a week, Bucky began bringing strangers home.

He seemed to have no preference for men or women, and was as happy with two as he was with just one. They were always loud, shambling, and so was Bucky. They’d slam against the door as they kissed, and Steve could hear them coming halfway down the street. He could hear some of them gagging in the bathroom at night. Some of them lingered around long enough in the morning to shuffle into the kitchen and make coffee. Some took food. Others left wearing Bucky’s clothes. Once, after a man had gone, Steve found some of his records missing.

Bucky forgot to close his door sometimes. After, he’d sleep without clothes and wander into the kitchen and bathroom that way in the morning.

Bucky was free. He was making choices as to what he did with his body, reclaiming himself. He was healing.

But every time Bucky moaned, all Steve could see was the Winter Soldier. Blank. Obedient. Pliant. God only knows what the sick fucks in HYDRA could have done with the Soldier. Steve’s mind went far beyond the possible uses of a weapon.

The sex toy shop sold dildos the size of Steve’s forearm. “You wanna get some lube with this?” the cashier asked.

“No,” Steve said.

He thought of Bucky, imagined Rumlow or Rollins or some faceless HYDRA goon stroking the Soldier’s lank hair. Forcing themselves inside him. Making him think that his only worth lay in his body, their use of it.

There were streaks of blood on the dildo after, and that felt right.

One night, Bucky brought home a screamer and the neighbors finally complained. Red-faced, Steve stammered apologies and promises. Once he closed the door, he headed to Bucky’s room. Bucky was pulling on a pair of pants.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said. “Can we talk?”

Bucky’s eyes were cold, angry. “It’s my body,” he said. “It’s mine and you can’t tell me what to do with it. You can’t tell me what to drink or who to fuck, Steve.”

“I don’t want to tell you what to do.” Steve bit back more words: _Why are you doing this how can I help you this is going to hurt you are you even using protection please stop._ “Just...you make a lot of noise. We have to be considerate of the people around us.”

Bucky stared at Steve. He sat down on his bed, unzipped his fly, and began to stroke himself. He was loud. His eyes never left Steve’s.

Steve walked away. It hurt to walk.

*

Bucky took to blasting music whenever he was home. Most of it was more noise than melody, and Steve suspected it was chosen to be as loud and irritating as possible. He didn’t know where Bucky got the iPod or the speakers. He was afraid to check his bank account, and sometimes he thought about taking his credit card back from Bucky, but then Bucky would probably take to shoplifting. Steve wasn’t going to let the cops find the Winter Soldier because of petty theft.

Sometimes, there would be a lull in the static and screaming and real music would play. Steve was sure that Bucky chose those songs as taunts. The lyrics caught in his mind, playing over and over as Steve ran. As he shopped. As he tried to sleep.

_I’m young, and I love to be young. I’m free, and I love to be free. To live my life the way that I want, to say and do whatever I please._

Steve’s morning runs lengthened. Sam would go to work and Steve would keep running, panting and slamming his feet against the pavement, circling the monuments over and over until he could barely move. Eventually he’d stop sweating and feel so cold and have to drag himself to the Metro.

It was better than being home.

At home, Bucky labeled all his things in the fridge and shrieked at Steve if he so much as nudged one, shouting that it was his and he bought it and Steve had no right to touch his things. He watched porn in the living room with the volume all the way up and his cock flaccid in his pants. Bucky put a rainbow of streaks in his hair, circled his eyes with dark, thick liner and painted his face in broad strokes with cartoonishly bright blush and lipstick. He wore leather and dresses and T-shirts with sequined obscenities.

“But that’s not the problem,” Sam said one morning. “Is it?”

“He looks ridiculous.” It shouldn’t have made Steve so angry. Bucky had been through hell because Steve had abandoned him. Steve had no right to be mad at him ever again. But watching Bucky be such a brat, making himself look like a clown, trying his damnedest to wreck his body...it was infuriating.

“Sure,” Sam said. “But so does any teenager trying to find themselves. He wasn’t allowed any self-expression for decades, Steve. This’ll level out. It’s the drinking himself sick that’s worrying. And—can super soldiers get STDs?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “I’d imagine he could get some girl pregnant.”

“He needs a doctor. Or a support group. Something to show him he can have healthy coping methods without sacrificing his individuality.”

“That’s what I told him two days ago. He accused me of trying to control his thoughts, and then he stayed out for twelve hours.”

Sam sighed. “He really is a teenager. Has he spent any time with Natasha?”

“Natasha?”

“Their backgrounds are similar, but she’s further along in her healing process. Seeing someone like him who seems to have it altogether—he might listen to her if she suggests he see a doctor.”

That’s how Sam and Natasha ended up coming over for a movie night. Neither of them said anything when Bucky came in with a safety pin through his eyebrow and a T-shirt reading “Cum Dumpster” in pink glitter. They didn’t comment on his black lipstick or the shiny burnt flesh on his right hand.

“I don’t have to use oven mitts,” Bucky had snapped at Steve that morning. “I can burn my hand if I fucking want.”

The movie was about janitor in Boston who was a genius. Bucky settled in to watch it easily enough, taking a spot on the couch next to Natasha. He seemed to be enjoying himself until the janitor got arrested. As part of a deferred prosecution agreement, the janitor was ordered to go to therapy. That’s when Bucky stood up and walked out of the room.

Sam grabbed Steve’s arm when Steve started to stand up. “Give him space,” he said. “Crowding him won’t help.”

Around five minutes later, Bucky returned. He was carrying a neatly folded white towel. Sitting back down by Natasha, he spread the towel across his lap, smoothing out the wrinkles.

Then he took a razor blade out of his pocket and cut a thin line from his wrist to his elbow.

By the time Natasha and Sam left, the towel was stained uniformly red. They’d asked him what he was doing, and he said that he liked it. That it was an endorphin rush, and he had fun making designs in his skin. He said he could decide how he hurt now, and no one could take it from him.

Sam had tried to explain that it wasn’t all right to make other people watch things like that. It might upset them. Then Bucky had shouted that this was his home as much as Steve’s, and he could do whatever he wanted to himself in his own home. “Fuck you if you don’t like it,” he’d said. “This is mine, and it makes me happy.”

When Sam and Natasha were gone, Bucky sat on the couch staring at Steve. Steve stared back, trying to bury the anger boiling in his gut.

“Why don’t you just say what you’re thinking?” Bucky demanded.

“They were only trying to help you,” Steve said. “You didn’t need to yell like that.”

Bucky stood up. He threw the towel against the wall, where it left a bloody streak as it slid down. “I can yell if I want!” he shouted.

“You’re getting blood on the floor,” Steve said. It was safer than anything he really wanted to say.

“Fuck the floor! That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Having your possessions all neat and perfect and unchanging! You hate me! You want your old Bucky back and you’re just too chickenshit to say it!”

Steve felt blood thrumming in his ears, heating his face. His heart was pounding, head spinning. There was too much blood, suddenly, pushing against his skin as if it could burst out and join Bucky’s on the floor.

“You can’t cut yourself,” he said.

“Yeah? Try and stop me, you piece of shit!”

“You...you _shouldn’t._ ” Steve felt feverish. Every word wanted to come out as a scream, and it took so much effort to rein that in that he could barely speak.

“Why not?” Bucky demanded. “Tell me why the fuck not, coward!”

“Because it’s disgusting!” Steve shouted. “ _You’re disgusting_! You think that just because you’re suffering, you have the right to throw it in everyone’s face and make them watch! No one wants to see that! Why do you have to be so fucking vulgar? You think you’re the only person who’s ever hurt? You’re not—it’s distasteful—you should just cover it up and—”

Fuck. Steve cut himself off so fast that it made him dizzy. _Fuck._ He should never have said that. Not to Bucky. Bucky was nothing like him. He wasn’t disgusting and rotten, and he didn’t deserve to suffer. And now Steve had said too much, and Bucky would know exactly how fucked up he was. Bucky would laugh in Steve’s face for thinking his guilt at all compared to what HYDRA had done to Bucky.

And then he would leave.

But Bucky wasn’t leaving. He stood there, unmoving save for the blood dripping down his fingers.

“Are you going to make me stop?” he asked.

The room was cramped and sweltering. Steve spun around, heading for the door. “I need air.”

Bucky got there first, blocking the doorway with his body. “Are. You Going. To make me stop?”

“Move.” Steve’s teeth were clenched.

“I can stand in the doorway if I want to stand in the doorway,” Bucky snapped. There was a fire in his eyes now, as if a dam had burst. “And you can’t touch me because I didn’t say you could touch me. You’re not leaving.”

“If you don’t move, Buck, I’ll break a window.”

“You’re pathetic!” Bucky shouted. “You think people can’t tell what you’re hiding? You put up this charade that everything’s perfect and sunny, and the worst part is you think you’re fooling people! You’re not. Everyone can see the ugly little sins you’re trying to hide, Steve. Just like everyone can see mine. So why the fuck don’t you embrace it? All you’re doing is giving people the rope to hang you with! If you’d just stop fucking hiding, you’d be free. Nothing can hurt you anymore except for you.”

Steve stepped back. He was shaking all over. He felt like he did after one of his runs, and he had to sink down on the couch before his legs gave out.

Something cold and rigid brushed his hand. He looked over, expecting Bucky’s metal fingers, but instead, Bucky was tapping the blunt end of the razor blade against him.

“You want to hurt,” Bucky said. He wasn’t shouting now, kneeling beside the couch, his eyes clear and pleading. “So do I. But you want to hide. Why can’t we share this? We can have this, all our own, and nobody can take it.”

Steve took the razor. He opened a cut across his wrist and let Bucky dip his fingers in the blood that welled up, drawing patterns on Steve’s skin.

It felt like heaven.

*

Steve stopped running.

He let Sam’s calls go to his voicemail. Eventually, the phone stopped listing any new messages, and Steve assumed the voicemail was full. Sometimes there were knocks on the door, but Bucky just turned his music up louder.

Sometimes Bucky left the apartment, returning with cigarettes and liquor. He never mentioned seeing anyone they knew, and Steve assumed that if he had, he’d come back laughing, telling Steve how he flashed them and told them to fuck off.

They smoked together. When Bucky pressed the cigarette butts against his arm, he never tensed. His face went slack, a smile tugging on the corners of his mouth.

Steve never stopped biting back a cry of pain when he did the same. For every wound Bucky made on his own body, Steve tried to match it. It was only right for Steve to start feeling all the pain that Bucky did. And seventy years’ more besides.

Not that they were going to live seventy more years, probably.

One night, Bucky went out and returned with a handful of little pills. “It’s called ecstasy,” he said. “Take it with me, Steve. You never fucking smile.”

Steve had smiled. He’d ended up lying on the floor giggling as Bucky had found the dildo in his closet. He wasn’t sure in the morning if Bucky had ridden the damn thing or not. There didn’t seem to be any new blood on it. Maybe Bucky’s body was just looser.

The thought made Steve vomit. He’d done a lot of that lately.

The next time, Bucky brought back heroin. Steve tried it and found himself unable to piss for hours after. Bucky called him a stick in the mud, and said he’d heard the high was even better with injections.

“Is that safe?” Steve asked.

“The fuck does safe mean?” Bucky wiped at his nose. He settled back on the couch, his eyes all black. “I haven’t been safe since I fell off the goddamn train, Steve. I’m like a fucking animate corpse. I ought to be in the ground. But it’s my body now, and I can choose the poison I put it into it.”

The next night, Bucky begged Steve to come out with him.

“You never go anywhere,” he said. Bucky was wearing the sort of skirt that belonged on a Catholic schoolgirl, presumably with the waistband rolled up under his shirt, because Steve could read the words he’d carved on his inner thighs earlier that day: FUCK up the right, and OFF down the left.

“What do you want me to write on you?” Bucky had asked hours ago, staining the couch as he sat down. There was heroin on the tip of his nose.

“Failure?” Steve had offered.

Bucky said no, because that didn’t split evenly, and had drawn snowflakes and stars instead.

“Please, Steve,” Bucky was pleading now. “I wanna try shooting up. And this place is fucking disgusting.”

“You’d be coming back to it,” Steve said.

“It’d be a break.”

“I don’t want to go out.” Steve shifted, tugging his sleeves down to cover his cuts. “I don’t want people to look at me.”

“Fuck people,” Bucky said. “We can get food. There’s nothing in this shithole. Besides, you want me to shoot up for the first time alone?”

That was how they ended up in a booth at McDonald’s, Steve hiding his face from the staring cashiers as Bucky shoveled down French fries, his eyes black. “You should try Special K,” he said, talking a mile a minute. “I’m serious, you’d like it, and it’s like a tranquilizer for horses or some shit so it would definitely work on you. You’d be happy.”

Bucky’s hair was limp and greasy, the makeup around his eyes smeared. The sleeves of his shirt had brown blotches where blood had leaked through, and stains down the front from the last time he ate. He looked like an addict.

Steve must have looked just as bad, and that seemed fair. “Okay,” he said.

There were voices behind them on the walk home, laughter and slurs. A group of teenagers, it sounded like. Steve drew his shoulders up, walking faster, but Bucky spun around, charging their way.

“Something you want to say?” he shouted, and getting a good look at him made them scatter.

“Bucky,” Steve said when Bucky seemed prepared to give chase. “They’re just stupid kids.”

“I know that,” Bucky snapped. “I don’t care what they think, Steve. I don’t care what anyone thinks. _Hey, DC_!” he shouted, throwing out his arms. “I’m the Winter Soldier!”

Steve grabbed his metal wrist and dragged him away.

Bucky only laughed, leaning against Steve’s shoulder as he was pulled. There were tears glistening in his eyes. “I am so fucked.”

*

“You’re beautiful,” Steve said.

Bucky was lying on the floor because Steve had passed out on the couch last night, and Bucky hadn’t felt like walking to his bed. His head was framed by empty beer bottles and cigarette cartons. He was skinny for a super soldier, his arms covered in bruises and half-healed gashes. Filthy strands of hair lay across his face, and there was a cigarette burn right at the corner of his mouth, like a beauty mark.

He was still the most beautiful thing Steve had seen since he woke up in this century.

Bucky giggled and shifted. His eyes were cloudy and far-off. Steve assumed he was drunk. _Steve_ was drunk.

“I look like shit,” Bucky said.

“You don’t. You couldn’t even if you tried.”

“I used to want to be ugly,” Bucky said. He spread his arms like a crucifixion victim, running his fingers through the pile of the rug.

“What?” Steve asked.

“Ugly.” Still smiling, Bucky turned his head, rubbing his face against the rug now. He wasn’t drunk, Steve realized. He was high. They’d found a little baggie of ecstasy last night that had been kicked under the couch or something, and Bucky must have taken some. “I wanted to be so fucking ugly. I wanted people to puke when they saw me.”

“Why?” Steve leaned over, watching Bucky arch and twist like a cat sunning himself. “I was ugly enough for both of us.” And still was, really.

“Not in Brooklyn.” Bucky might have shaken his head. Or might just have been enjoying the floor; Steve couldn’t tell. “I think—I don’t remember Brooklyn much. But I think I was a fucking peacock. And guess they saw that.”

“They?”

“HYDRA,” Bucky said. “They made everything hurt. The chair, and the ice, the training exercises. And that was all standard procedure. If you fucked up, that’s when you really got it. I thought I was going to die every time. And if I fucked up bad enough, then they hurt me long enough that I started to be afraid that I _wouldn’t_.”

He went still, drawing his limbs back in. Bucky was staring up at the ceiling, though it was plain he wasn’t seeing it. “But it’s not like you were out of the woods if shit went right either,” he said. “They had these parties. That’s what they called them. When the team was successful. They’d get so excited every time. I could actually smell it, the anticipation. It was like adrenaline and sex. It made me gag, except I couldn’t gag. Wasn’t allowed.”

Steve felt his own stomach churning.

“I remember once, sitting there. Frozen. Like a fucking deer. Like, maybe if I’m quiet enough, they won’t notice me. And I could feel these eyes. Someone behind me, just fucking leering. Like, ‘hey, beautiful, wait ‘til we get back to the base.’ And I wanted to be ugly. Take one of my knives and hack myself up like ground beef. I wanted to be so ugly that no one would touch me. Not to fuck, not to take my pulse, nothing. And then nothing would hurt.”

Steve tried to speak, but his voice had gone.

“The wipes made me so stupid.” Bucky smiled again. He twisted on the floor, curling up in a fetal position, knocking over a few bottles. “I didn’t get it. Everything hurts. I didn’t really know until the Smithsonian. You hurt all the time when you were a kid. And then I remembered I hurt because you were hurting. And you hurt now, and I did with HYDRA and when I got away. It never stops.”

He met Steve’s eyes. “But nobody else ever let me decide how it hurt before. You’re the only one who gave me that.”

“Gave you?” Steve repeated. He was drowning suddenly, and it didn’t feel like an effect of their drugs.

“I kept pushing,” Bucky said. “Trying to test the limits. And then, when nothing happened, I tried to go as far over the line as I could. Puking up your whole refrigerator twice. Fucking with the doors open. Slashing up myself in front of your guests. I figured that way I’d know the worst that I was in for. And maybe, if I was that bad, any other ways I fucked up would seem so minor in comparison. I didn’t get that you were leaving it all in my hands. That you wanted to help me.”

“Leaving it in your hands.” There was an ache in Steve’s head. It didn’t feel like a hangover. More like something malignant lurking inside, growing by the second. “Leaving what?”

“My pain,” Bucky said. He shut his eyes, a beatific calm settling over his features. “You let _me_ control how I hurt. I never knew pain could be so freeing until I came here, Steve. I didn’t realize the power I could have over my life until you showed me. It’s the best gift anyone’s ever given me.”

Steve stared. The couch put him, at best, two feet off the ground, but he felt miles up and dizzy.

“With HYDRA,” Bucky murmured drowsily, “I’d have given anything for a handler like you.”

Steve sat up. His phone was under the fast food wrappers and neglected mail on the coffee table. The battery was low, but it still turned on.

Steve stepped over the trash on the floor and shut himself in the bathroom. He looked in the mirror.

He was dirty, pale, too thin. His shirt was stained. Steve didn’t see any of that.

He saw a failure who’d fallen apart instead when Bucky needed help the most. Steve had let his own pain show, and Bucky misunderstood.

There was no point in crying. Crying wouldn’t help. There was nothing Steve could do to help; he’d already failed in every way.

So he took the phone and dialed Sam’s number.

**Author's Note:**

> The song that Bucky gets stuck in Steve's head is Lesley Gore's ["You Don't Own Me."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QEqLTbEXy0)
> 
> The full bodily autonomy prompt: _I would LOVE to see Bucky being aggressive or almost territorial about his bodily autonomy and his right to do what he wants._
> 
> _No I don't HAVE to get the burning-hot pan with my flesh hand, Steve, but you can't stop me so I CAN and I WILL._
> 
> _No you CAN'T touch me on the elbow to get past me because I'm a PERSON and I have the right to NOT be touched if I say NO._
> 
> _No I don't NEED to eat until I puke but I CAN and nobody is stopping me for the first time in my memory so FUCK YOU I will._
> 
> _\+ if this turns into an eating disorder (I can eat as much as I want and then puke and then eat more because NOBODY is going to be mad at me for wasting food or make me eat it again)_
> 
> _++ if this turns into self-harming behavior (I cut myself and I left a scar and NOBODY CAN STOP ME. I can make myself ugly so nobody wants to fuck me again or I can make myself pretty with all these intricate designs I don't give a FUCK if they bleed or hurt Steve)._
> 
> The full self-harm prompt: _Steve has various ways of coping with stuff -- throwing himself into his work, running really fast around the mall, but I feel like a pretty major one is getting himself into dangerous situations where he might get hurt. So during Bucky's recovery -- he can't exactly do that with the same abandon, so he turns to various ways of self harm as a way of coping with the self-blame and anger that comes from whatever Hydra Horrors Bucky mentions, and also the stress of just trying to help Bucky._
> 
> _Of course, with the super serum, any cuts heal pretty fast, but they can still be briefly painful. And maybe he breaks his finger bones before going to bed, and they're still healing and tender the next day, so he has to say he slept on his hands funny. (And during the next day's training he still insists on punching things super hard)_
> 
> _Just... Steve bleeding on himself because he doesn't want to bleed on other people, and all sort of unhealthy self-blame stuff._
> 
> _\+ Steve inflicting any pain on himself that HYDRA had inflicted on Bucky. A sort of self-castigation of sorts. Anything from whipping to stun batons to large dildos in his butt -- as long as Steve is feeling miserable and relishing every moment of it. Because it's Steve's fault that Bucky had to deal with it (because Steve didn't go back to find him.)_
> 
> _++ Hiding EVERYTHING from Bucky and making himself distant and wearing long sleeves and withholding touch from Bucky, at a time when Bucky really needs it._
> 
> _+++ It all gets outed in a weirdly public way, like medical records going public showing waaay too many bone fractures, or a last-minute mission going south_
> 
> _++++ But at first people assume that it was cause he'd recently gotten captured by HYDRA, but Steve has to admit to his self harm, because in spite of everything, Steve takes responsibility for his actions._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Had A Dream About You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12216684) by [DarkCaustic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkCaustic/pseuds/DarkCaustic)




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